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Sunday is Father’s Day, an occasion which, when I was growing up, belonged to the other people but not myself.  I only had my father until I was eight, and his imprint seemed so light compared to my mother’s powerful impact on me. Now, as this holiday approaches, I find myself wondering if my father influenced me more than I realized. Or was it primarily his absence that marked my life with expectations of loss or disappointment that manifested differently, but distinctly, with each phase of my life.

More authors write memoirs about their mothers than about their fathers. Some are untangling the complex influences of a mother, as in Ruth Reichl’s For You Mom, Finally, or Mary Gordon’s Circling My Mother. (By the way, a decade earlier she did write about her father in The Shadow Man.) Others, like myself in The Woman in the Photograph, are searching for missing pieces of their mother’s life or character, driven to find the wholeness of this important feminine influence beyond the significant but defined role of mother. But fewer writers untangle the personal histories of their fathers. I wonder if it is more of a taboo to uncover our father’s secrets. Must we allow them to keep their positions of authority and strength, or even of blame and weakness, without really exposing their vulnerability? Certainly women have a longer history of self-revelation, and this might give us more permission to feel we are entitled to remove their masks.

Not quite trusting my own literary scope, I did a quick scan of memoirs. It confirmed my impression that fewer memoirs were about fathers, though there is a nice list of those on the Goodreads site. Here are two that called to me: Bureau of Missing Persons: Writing the Secret Lives of Our Fathers by Roger Portman. Including commentary on 18 people who wrote about their fathers, the review says they become detectives, piecing together clues to fill memory voids, assembling material and archival evidence, public and private documents, letters, photographs, and iconic physical objects to track down the parent. The other is  And When Did You Last See Your Father? A Son’s Memoir of Love and Loss by Blake Morrison who raises the questions: Can we ever see our parents as themselves, or are they forever defined through a child’s eyes? What are the secrets of their lives, and why do they spare us that knowledge? And when they die, what do they take with them that cannot be recovered or inherited?

So as alway, my suggestion is take this opportunity to reflect on how your father played a role in shaping your own life. What do you actually know about him. If you are so fortunate, take this day to talk with him, to ask him the questions I so often wish I could have asked. Or speak to those who knew him. And most of all, celebrate his life and your own heritage for all it has taught you.

This year my son-in-law is a father of twin boys now ten months old and the importance and grace of his role fills me with awe. For the first time, I feel connected to the holiday. Happy Father’s Day Brett and all fathers.

I just finished reading “Love and Treasure”, a wonderful new novel by Bay Area writer by Ayelet Waldman. This tale was a compelling look into the conditions Jews faced in post WWII Europe, and also an insightful reminder of the plight of the displaced persons with no country or home to return to. Reading it resonated with my own purpose in writing the story of the search for my own mother’s past––a true account of a twenty year journey across continents and lifetimes to uncover the buried secrets and startling revelations of my mother’s life in pre-Nazi Leipzig, and her challenges after she fled her homeland.

In “The Woman in the Photograph,”  (NOW HALF PRICE ON KINDLE THRU MOTHER’S DAY), I  find a startling buried photograph and spend two decades filling in the omissions in my mother’s story. In Waldman’s book, it is a granddaughter’s search for the history behind a pendant taken from the train load of stolen Hungarian Jewish possessions after WWII. This brings to mind yet aanother wonderful and moving nonfiction book by Bay Area writer Marta Fuchs. “Legacy of Rescue” is the true story of how a Christian Hungarian army officer saved the life of her father, and how she and her family went back to Hungary to honor, and give material support, to the descendants of this Hungarian man who himself did not survive the war.

Whether fiction or nonfiction, all three of these books have something in common.

The link between these narratives is the desire to re-establish balance in the world, even if it takes relentless patience and many generations to do so. After finishing “Love and Treasure” I realized once again that my search was not just a personal effort to fill in missing details, names, date and events that pertain to my ancestors. This alone would not have changed who I am. It is the sense that whenever one of us can reconstruct a loss of history and pay tribute to those whose memory has been forgotten, than we all have a new foundation to understand our part in the living chain of evolution seeking conscious balance through time.

My mother could not reclaim the property taken from her through German Aryanization. Two generations later, that property became available to me and allowed me to buy a simple home in the East Bay. But beyond the material thread of restitution, and even beyond the longing for  justice that cannot really be satisfied, when we know and communicate the truth of our histories, we arrive at a new place of resolution and acceptance that allows us, and our society, to move forward. Maybe that is also why we sometimes “play it forward” (maybe the expression is “pay it forward” but play fits better for me).We cannot always thank someone from our past who gave us support or did something that restored our trust in life. But we can offer our thanks in an action toward someone else today, a thank you passed on to restore balance.

How have you wondered about missing pieces of your family story. What have you learned and how has that changed you?

Please join Jim Van Buskirk and me on this Tuesday night, May 13, 7pm in San Francisco at the Jewish Community Library for a conversation on “Secrets and Revelations.” No charge for the event and parking is free too. For more info, see page 15 of catalog.

10,232 readers just downloaded my historical memoir, THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH during a 3-day free Kindle promotion. It was very exciting to watch the tallies on the Kindle report page, seeing the numbers jump by hundreds every hour. I was thrilled to watch the book rise to #1 in several categories, including Ethnic and National Biographies, and Women.

But what does that mean, to me, and to us as a community? Here are some of my observations. First, cyberspace and social media really do take whatever we have to offer far beyond the little pond of the people we can personally meet in a lifetime. I love the personal connections that happen at a book signing or a book club, but it’s also very inspiring when in one day six new reviews appear on the Amazon site from people who obviously downloaded the book for free, and then READ IT! Their comments tell me that though the story focused on my own journey––a twenty-year search to uncover my mother’s hidden past, a quest set in motion by the discovery of a photograph (seen on the cover of my book)––somehow it also touched on their life experiences and made them reflect on how their lives have been shaped by people they didn’t even know.

It tells me that people are reading, not just the best sellers or the hot tickets, but that the SPIRIT OF CURIOSITY is alive and well. People are trying out books they never heard of, and subjects that they may be new to. In her book, “Wired for Story,” Lisa Cron says what draws us into a story and keeps us there is the firing of our dopamine neurons, tantalizing us with the expectation that new information is on the way. Maybe that’s why we get excited when posed with a question, whether on the evening news or a chance to read something we don’t already know about. “Who is the woman in the photograph?”

I think the results of this phenomenal response go along with the David and Goliath theme from last week’s blog post. There are new cultural models springing up that don’t rely on the traditional entrenched institutions and authorities. People are interested in each other, and readers are willing to trust their own instincts on what they want to read. Any individual writer or self-publisher, a “David” in a sense, can find an audience, can be heard, will be read by someone. And that makes us all want to write more. Writing is not the solitary path it once was, it is part of a living circle that includes readers who write, whether it’s their own memoir, a blog or a review.

Will all 10,000 people read my book? I doubt it. But some of them will, and will find themselves reflecting on their own family secrets, wanting to talk to relatives and to uncover the missing links in their own history. Some of these people will be inspired to do some writing, to tap their own creativity and try their hand at telling their own stories.

Already six new 5-star reviews have appeared on my book’s Kindle site. I want to thank those people who are committed to being readers, who look at what the fresh and innovative new writers are putting out, who take the time to talk about books. I couldn’t find a way to email them personally, so I’m thanking them all here. Thank you.

[PS The Kindle version is now $8.99 or if you want to buy a print book with a personal inscription to give as a holiday gift, I hope to have the link up on my website by early December. They are also available online at Barnes and Noble, Amazon and in the Bay Area at Book Passage, Pegasus North Berkeley, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum in SF.]

The latest book by Malcolm Gladwell (remember “Blink”) gives a refreshing perspective on the less obvious power of the small–the David in us that often has to go up against the giants in our lives. In “David and Goliath” Gladwell illustrates with this classic biblical story, that David’s success was not such a fluke, or even as much a miracle as we sometimes believe. He points to the strength we often draw upon when faced with overwhelming odds and compares that to David, who had flexibility, strategy, mobility, ingenuity and skillfulness that outmatched the more solid, fixed, traditional power of Goliath.

His examples from other lives and other historical references are interesting, but the theme made me think of independent publishing, my little corner of the David and Goliath story. When I was finished writing “The Woman in the Photograph,” I gave it to about 100 people to read, including a best selling author and two very competent agents. Almost to a person, my first readers were enthusiastic and were touched personally by the story. They gave me rave reviews personally but the agents said they didn’t think they could “sell it.” They told me the world of big publishers used to take a chance on something unusual or someone less known. But the market has changed and now publishers want a big, explosive drama and a guarantee of your giant social network, your thousands of friends and fans who will promise to buy the book in advance.

This may sound like sour grapes, but I think I was relieved to hear this. The whole story of my twenty year search to uncover my mother’s hidden past was so intimate and revealing, that I felt glad to have more control over how the book would be produced and marketed. I was fortunate to put together a wonderful team of editors and designers (mostly friends who were also gifted professionals) who created a cover and a format that held the mystery and the beauty of the story. But the real “David” part was learning how to spread the news without the outreach of a big publisher or even access to getting reviewed in  major publications or sold in major book chains.

That meant moving gracefully and wisely against the Goliath of a commercial publishing network. Several wonderful independent bookstores hosted my talks. Innovative creative literature festivals like Litquake gave me an initial platform for my book, and then the rest became the personal outreach to friends, networks, internet sites, book clubs and community events in my local area. There is a growing accessible network of online venues for writers and books. Rather than dying out with the new media we have, books are coming back in new ways.

I am thrilled every time a reader, usually a stranger, sends me an email. I am grateful for every review that appears on Amazon, Goodreads or other sites. (hint: please post your own reviews of my book.) The kinship between readers and writers is growing, and often there is no distinction as more and more people read and do their own creative writing. It has become all our domain. No more Davids. No more Goliaths.

To celebrate the growing emergence of the creative power in all of us, I am offering the Kindle version of “The Woman in the Photograph” as a FREE download November 19-21. This also commemorates the November 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, where my story begins. A hidden photograph, a property stolen by the Nazis, and the collapse of an impenetrable wall take you on a journey across generations and continents. Enjoy it and tell your friends, as we all learn to move gracefully around the obstacles in our lives.

Once again, the apology. Sometimes life intervenes with blog writing. You’ve probably noticed that yourself regarding your own creative projects. We are not all disciplinarians. A woman once told me she writes one book per year. Ok, that’s not me. How about each decade? How about the calendar doesn’t matter so much as the mystery when writing takes you to new places you didn’t imagine. That is the remarkable magic of memoir writing. In my experience.

Did you ever notice that sometimes when you are in a conversation with someone else, you hear yourself saying things that were not fully formed in your mind beforehand? Of course you have noticed that. When I work with individual clients, I am always listening too. Some people have an open mind that brings out our untapped thoughts and clearer perceptions.

That’s what happened this week when I was invited to speak to several high school English classes who were doing a memoir writing project. It may be that their teacher expected me to talk about metaphors and topic sentences (I am the queen of metaphors), but what came out of my mouth was how memoir writing is like a pilgrimage. It is good to have some kind of map. In writing a short story or a whole book, we talk about the “arc” of the story. But as on a pilgrimage, you open up to unexpected possibilities when you honor where you are led and examine each thing that comes up to see if it has meaning, rather than turn away and say, “that isn’t in my outline.”

Now I am not talking about the final version. I am referring to what Anne Lamott calls shitty first drafts. That’s the name of one of the chapters in Bird by Bird, her book on writing and life (I always recommend it.) If you refine or edit your writing too soon, you may have the intellectual sequence but you miss the passion, you miss what touches a more universal chord, you control rather than discover. Later there is plenty of time for revision, editing, adding and deleting. I am reminded of the very famous poem by T.S. Eliot called “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Proofrock.” For some reason I memorized it when I was in high school. In a minute there will time for decisions and revisions that a minute will reverse. Too much indecision is not a good thing in life or writing, but it has its place. I told those students to just let it flow at first. Our minds don’t retain information in a democratic manner. Sometimes a memory or vision pops up that you hadn’t thought of and gives an image, a metaphor, a depth that coalesces what you are after.

On that note, I am going to give you a paragraph from “The Woman in the Photograph” that was never part of my original plan. The image just unfolded one day when I was doing a warm up of free writing. In its simple way, it brought together the whole theme of my book.

“…I thought of my mother’s resilience despite her losses. I remembered her doing jewelry repairs for Lynne, sitting at the kitchen table in the evening with a bright lamp focused on a square of dark blue quilted cloth. She laid a row of pearls out on the fabric, organized by size, smallest to largest and back to smallest. Slipping the needle and thread through the tiny hole, she flipped the necklace in a graceful gesture that formed a knot between each pearl. Then she pulled the knot tight between her thumb and index finger to produce a perfectly spaced strand of cultured pearls. I pictured my mother’s face in the glow of the lamp, the furrow of her brow as she concentrated all her attention on her work.

Now it was my turn to string the pearls of her life story—to lay them out in chronological order and knot them back together in a perfect strand.”

For those of you in Bay Area, I will be leading a panel on “How Memoir Writing Can Change Your Life” at the Kensington library on Monday, Sept.30, 7pm, and will be speaking at the Belvedere-Tiburon library on October 22.

I welcome your comments.